Welcome Letter From the Secretary-General

My name is Devrim Deniz ÖZKUŞ, and I have the honor of acting as the Secretary-General of Model United Nations Turkey Conference 2017, which will be held between 6-10 March, in Antalya, Turkey.

I would like to welcome you to the MUNTR family with immense pride and joy, in the name of Director-General Mr. Barış Demir and each and every member of our Academic and Organization teams. 13th edition of MUNTR is being shaped around the concept of diversity. Believing that diversity is the source of development, we have set the theme of the conference as ‘Concord and Diversity’.

First of all, MUNTR 2017 must be regarded as a platform where we try and fight the roots of discrimination through understanding, acceptance and tolerance. The year of 2016 demonstrated how powerful hatred and ignorance can be. The MUNTR team, in return, wishes to reveal the constructive side of tolerance through the teachings of the United Nations.

The abovementioned mission and vision led to a committee setup which enables the participants to shape international policies in order to form a world best suited for the 21st Century. With the knowledge and experience of twelve years, we aim higher in every new edition of MUNTR and the thirteenth edition is not an exception. With our theme in mind, we intend to provide an experience, in which our participants can and will dispose of the outdated understandings of social, political and legal integration processes while theoretically increasing the living standards of those we forgot.

This year, we will be hosting our participants in 8 different committees focusing on topics varying from refugee rights, private law, development, security, disarmament to human rights. One of the committees of MUNTR 2017, The Philadelphia Convention, will enable the participants to re-shape one of the most significant events of the history, with the knowledge of its successes and failures. General Assembly Committees: DISEC and SOCHUM, will demonstrate the highest authority of the United Nations. Two crisis committees will be hosted, which will motivate its participants to act on instinct and always stay alert: in the North Atlantic Council representatives will form the highest decision making body of one of the most powerful intergovernmental organizations, while the delegates of the Futuristic Security Council (2022) will tackle the problems in an epoch of polarity shifts while they are adopting to the circumstances. The participants of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will be forming policies and solutions for the most pressing human rights knot the world witnesses in our time. In the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space delegates will regulate all aspects of the usages of space including its commercial side, thus the agenda item will help the acknowledgment of newly discovered resources. Lastly, the participants of the Supreme Court of the United States of America will navigate in the intertwined fields of common law.

Finally, with the innovative tradition of the Model United Nations Association and the confidence the MUNTR team gives me with their dedication and hard work, I welcome you to the 13th edition of MUNTR and hope to meet you all in Antalya.